"Economics, politics, religion, crime and warfare are fused into this game. Run an incredibly realistic trading company during the italian Renaissanse."

ECONOMY

Money = Power. Therefore, the base for your success is in trade. Use a variety of units, sea and land, to establish trade routes with cities all over the known world. But first, you must discover cities to trade with. Some cities will deny you access to their market forcing you to either bribe your way in or brutally overrun them with your mercenary armies. And should there be an emergency such as a siege, a religious turmoil or a plague in a city, prices on imported goods there will skyrocket emulating drought of supply of those goods. Supply and demand caused by you and the other players are very realistically modeled. If you overtrade the route its profitability will begin to fall, but if you leave it be for a while the prices will return to reasonable levels.

Once you have a profitable company, you may turn to other aspects of the game.

POLITICS

By bribing senators into your faction, you get involved in politics - potentially a very beneficial field. There are five government offices three of which get government funding of at least 1000 gold per month. Should your senator be appointed into one of those positions, you will receive the department's money every month and be required to spend at least half of them on the department's needs, letting you pocket quite a hefty sum. You can also use the department's resources to your benefit. If you are an infrastructure minister you will obviously spend public funds to build roads where you, and not your competitors, benefit from them most. If you are in charge of the venetian army or navy it's a safe bet that they will fight to protect your interests and leave your competitors to pirates and robbers.

The fourth position - chief of justice brings you no profit, but allows to devastate the competition. Each turn you are allowed to accuse one senator of treason. If you succeed the suspected senator is hanged and whatever gold your competitors spent bribing them is lost.

The best position to occupy is the Doge. To achieve it, you need to have bribed at least half of the senators to win an election. As Doge you get to decide the tax rate(more, more!), and allocate collected taxes to various departments($$$$ for the ones you hold, $ for the competition). You also get to decide which faction to appoint in charge of which department.

RELIGION

Venetian senators aren't the only ones you can bribe. The Catholic Church puts cardinal positions up for sale from time to time and a player interested in getting involved in religion buys them. A cardinal itself is not very useful, aside from bringing some profit from sale of indulgences into your treasury. The real benefit comes from acquiring enough cardinal positions to win the next election and make one of your men the Pope. Now you can set indulgence rate, open new cardinal positions, call crusades and excommunicating cities. Calling a crusade gives you a free army to use as you wish. Excommunicating a city creates a religious unrest there boosting the prices of all imports. If you are wise, you will park a few caravans with those imports right by the city gates and when the uprising starts make sensational amounts of money off the situation.

CRIME

This is your tool to cheat the system in politics and religion, as well as carry out vendettas on other players. Would you not like an election *right now*, but you have to wait till the current Doge or Pope finishes his term or dies. Well, you can help the latter happen sooner. Worried that the competitor is well-liked by the people? Some people can spread scandalous rumors for a small fee. Want to get really violent? How about setting your competitor's villa on fire? Not good enough for you? How about their warehouse filled with spices?

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/26/02, Updated 08/26/02